Green Day continued its residency on Last Call with Carson Daly last night (June 11), with two tracks from the band’s new album, 21st Century Breakdown. The band members perform before an odd mixture of devoted fans and faintly disinterested make-up-the-numbers audience members, who let out a raucous cheer when Billie Joe Armstrong gives a gruff shout out to Los Angeles.

The rapid-fire snare drum intro to “Murder City” momentarily makes it sound like it’s going to be a cover of Nirvana’s “Territorial Pissings,” but instead it’s another production-line-punk Green Day song. The medium paced title track of the album follows, with Armstrong delivering trite lines like: “My generation is zero/I never made it as a working class hero.”

I am a rock historian and musician. When I heard 21 Guns , it took several listens on the radio to really hear it and try to guess who the band was. Then I looked them up on the internet, and was awestruck at it being Green Day! What a great piece of music that is! With not only chorus and verse, but bridge and interlude as well. That is great writing by a band that most label as a "3 chord" punk band. They were always far above "punk", in the subject mater of their words, and in the music. Green Day has made a quantum leap in their maturity, (yes, maturity is cool even for punk!). 21 Guns is not about guns. It is about the battles we all want to fight. Battles we take on that we should let go of. Let the old heart die. Let the control go. Let God, nature, or karma take over and bring some life and joy with it! Thrown up your arms, into the sky, and to add to Billie Joe's words, "And Rejoice...YOU AND I !!